When to stop working on a story if the relationship just isn’t working out.
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Having married relatively later in life, in my forties, I dated a lot, so I well know that dating, as I still remember vividly (and as this recent New York times quiz strikingly illustrates), can be tough. And breakups are among the worst parts of dating: the disappointment, the awful execution, the often painful aftermath.
Yet I’ve always been fascinated by relationships, my own and all of my friends’: It led to my writing a four-book series called the Breakup Doctor and a regular feature for the Huffington Post, both all about relationships and what can go wrong in them. I love analyzing what makes a relationship work and why breakups happen: what led up to them, how to do it, and most of all, how you know when it’s time to let go.
I say all that to establish my bona fides on ending things that may not be going where you want them to at the moment, so perhaps it will lend some credence to my case for how to know when it may be time to let go of a story that just isn’t working the way it should.
Most every author knows the pain of the manuscript that winds up in the drawer instead of on the shelves and in readers’ hands (and if you don’t yet, you very likely will). Abandoned stories are a part of life as a writer, the same way that breakups are an unavoidable part of most people’s dating life.
Despite your best intentions, ideas, and vision, sometimes a story simply won’t come together the way you want it to—no matter how many times you revise it…even with the help of a professional.
How to know when to let go of a story
Just as in any relationship, if you pay attention to the signs and are honest with yourself, it can help you determine if you’re just going through a rocky stretch worth pushing through or it’s time to go your separate ways.
- It isn’t the right fit. Sometimes you may get into a long-term relationship with a story even though, really, you know you were never right for each other. Maybe you wanted to try a genre outside your usual interests or reading habits—walk on the wild slide for a bit. But amid the day-to-day reality of your time together, your differences throw up roadblocks between you that may feel increasingly difficult or unpleasant to overcome.
- You’ve lost the spark. Oh, sure, things started off passionately exciting—the newness of that fresh relationship, learning about each other, lost in your own world when you’re together and thinking about that story all the time when you’re not. But then real life sets in—with its hardships and challenges, its relentless routine, its pedestrian plodding. Suddenly you feel your story holds no surprises for you…or you don’t even care to try to discover any. You’re just slogging along, gritting your teeth and determined to see this thing through because, dammit, you committed.
- You’ve (both) changed. It’s nobody’s fault…we all evolve, and if we’re lucky we grow along the same path. But sometimes we don’t—you go one way and your story goes another. Be grateful for the time you spent together, the memories you made, and all you learned from each other…and then set each other free so you can fly your own way.
- You let your friends too far into the relationship. Even when you’re doing it, maybe a little voice is telling you not to let everyone know everything about you and your story. Not to let so many people all weigh in on what they think is wrong with your relationship and how they’d fix it if they were you. Sure, maybe a trusted friend or two can be a confidant worth consulting, but if you’re throwing open the doors to all and sundry to give their opinion, you’re going to get so many points of view that you’ll lose sight of your own—and lose faith in your own judgment. After a while you’re just reducing your story to the lowest common denominator, trying to follow too many directives, and before you know it, whatever made your relationship special has been diluted and lost.
- That bastard is ghosting you. Sometimes there’s no knowing what went wrong—the story just slips away. You show up day after day, but the story doesn’t. You never hear from them anymore. No matter how much you reach out, try to get back in touch, they’re just gone—ghosted. You know what? F*** that guy. If your story just won’t respond no matter how hard you try, leave it in the rearview and find yourself a story that will.
- You can’t fix what’s gone wrong. Sometimes things simply don’t develop the way you hoped, no matter how hard you work or how much you want them to. Maybe there are foundational flaws that would require so much of an overhaul to address that you may lose everything that initially excited you about this story; or maybe your skills and experience don’t yet match up to what an especially complex or difficult story requires; or you’ve worked yourself into a corner you can’t see any way out of and you lack the energy or impetus to try. There’s no shame in throwing up the white flag and letting that story go.
There’s no shame in letting any story go—no matter how much time or effort you’ve given it. If things aren’t working and it’s sucking the creative spark out of you or undermining your confidence in yourself and your writing, or it’s just begun to feel like a slog that you have to finish because of the sunk costs of all your time and effort or you’re dying to just submit already and get published, let it go. You’re not doing either one of you justice by trudging grimly through or racing to the “altar” of publication.
Sometimes the greatest expansion and benefit you can experience as an artist lies in knowing when to let one project go…and use what you’ve learned to continue to grow.
How to recover from a breakup
That doesn’t mean it’s not hard, and it doesn’t hurt. It is, and it will. But the only way forward is through it—let yourself feel and mourn the loss, and then move on.
Just as in any relationship, of course, you have to do the work on yourself to make sure you’re in a healthy, positive place. Continue to learn your craft, master your skills, address the fallout from a “failed” story so it doesn’t undermine your confidence or creativity…and then turn your attentions to a new lover so you continue to grow as a writer.
That’s right: The best way to get over an old story is to get into a new one…or something like that. Find a story you’ve got that spark for, and take what you learned from what didn’t work in your last story to make sure this one starts out on the right foot, and that you know how to sustain your relationship and build it and see it through all the way to “The End.”
The worst thing you can do after the inevitable breakups that are part of any author’s creative path is to wallow in them, or use it to flog yourself for your shortcomings. It’s not you, darling, it’s them! And even where you did contribute to your downfall together, it taught you to do a little better this time around…and the next…and the next. Not one word of those efforts was wasted.
And—every now and then, even if things didn’t work out the first time—one day you may return to that old story and realize that finally your time has come.
Breakups aren’t always forever
Sometimes you and a particular story might just be in the right relationship at the wrong time. I’ve shared before that my last novel, The Way We Weren’t (published as Phoebe Fox), was the first one I ever attempted—fifteen years before it found its way into publication. I put that story aside many times over those years because while I still loved it, it just wasn’t our time yet: I didn’t have the writing skill, the life experience, to tell it the way I wanted to.
I had to grow a bit more to be able to do justice to what was probably the story closest to my heart. We both did, that story and I. Over the years we’d get back together for a while, give it another try, get a little farther, but there was always something that kept things from working as well as I wanted them to and we’d have to call it off again, take time apart like Ross and Rachael on a break.
But I never really gave up on that story, even when it was lying in the proverbial drawer, even when I was in relationships with other stories. I’d think about it from time to time, hoping that one day maybe we could be the right fit. With us (also like Ross and Rachael), it was always on the table.
And one day it was. We wound up having a beautiful relationship, and that story helped me reach one of my goals for myself as a writer: the Big Five publishing contract I always wanted.
We just had to wait for our time.
Speaking of time, if you have a few minutes to spare click to see a fun, ridiculous video I made about the loooong road to publication for The Way We Weren’t, and how it changed over the years in revision.
Authors, I want to hear your manuscript-breakup stories: the juicy ones, the messy ones, the painful ones. How did you know when it was time? What let you finally let go? What did you do to get over that story—and what did you learn from it?
FoxPrint Editorial helps writers strengthen their manuscripts through developmental editing, education, and practical writing guidance. Explore more articles on revision, storytelling, and the publishing process.
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